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There is a really great cop show I neglected to mention in part one: The Wire. During its run it didn’t pick up any awards and suffered from low viewership. Now it is regarded as one of the best shows in television history and partly considered to be responsible for ushering in the modern golden age of TV.

That’s what we’d like to do with you, if we had the option to meet in person. Why? Because you care about cooperatives and growing solidarity economies, and we know that your knowledge of and commitment to your community is something that we share, no matter where we live and work.

A conversation with Darya Marchenkova and Brian Van Slyke of the Toolbox for Education and Social Action (TESA) worker co-op. Topics include TESA's new board game Rise Up!, what it's like to work in a geographically distributed collective, and how the collective has balanced consensus and autonomous decision-making.

There is a great need to re-invent the newspaper so it can serve the needs of particular communities everywhere. The Banyan Project is exploring the possibility of using the consumer co-op model for a community-based internet news service that would help communities advance their own interests.

Friday October 14, 2011, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! keynoted the first CICOPA North America Worker Co-op conference in Quebec. Goodman addressed an audience of over 150, including many representatives from worker cooperatives across Canada and the United States. She told us: "We need a media that covers the movements that create static, and history, like yours." While her main message was about the importance of independent media, she also commented that, "As the Occupy Wall Street movement looks for solutions - this is what all of you are about!"

Here is a chart that will help keep hope alive. On the top line it tells what the actual wealth distribution in the US is. The middle line shows how wrong a cross-section of Americans is in how they think the wealth distribution plays out.